I just think that app stores are going to be more and more important to the ecosystems they exist in. For the reasons I mentioned above, I think more and more software is going to be procured via app stores (although, in big businesses it will probably be fairly small), and that is going to influence what developers build.
I probably wouldn't have built and sold a Mac app if there weren't an app store, and as I look at porting it to Windows, trying to replicate the infrastructure that I get for free with an app store isn't very appealing for the amount of money I'd likely make, so my choices are: make a metro-style app so I can use the Windows app store or not make the app at all.
> Perhaps that is simply something we'll agree to disagree on?
Fair enough :)
It's very important for them to have the metro environment flourish and for that they're going to need lots of metro apps and blah blah blah. Metro IS important. It just isn't replacing the desktop any time soon.